Dark Star Rising review.
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Dark Star Rising – Magick and Power in the Age of Trump. Gary Lachman.

This book argues that Chaos Magic has made Donald Trump POTUS and that it also made Vladimir Putin Tsar of Russia with the Chaoist Alexander Dugin as his Rasputin. However, the author (an American) barely mentions the role of Chaos Magic in the accomplishment of Brexit. Nevertheless, the book does provide a comprehensive introduction to some of the principles and practices of Chaos magic.

Most if not all political initiatives grow out of shadowy or ‘occult’ beginnings in the realms of fringe religion, philosophy, and metaphysics.

Chaos Magic provides a philosophy and a technology for encouraging rather improbable and unlikely events to occur. Its technical theory predicted the advent of the Pandaemon-aeon well in advance of its current phenomenisation. However, Lachman only quotes Liber Null, so perhaps he didn’t notice the Aeonics material in Liber Kaos. For some source material on the origins of Chaoism he resorts to the second-rate scholarship of Dave Evans who, after failing to get an interview (nobody liked him) simply googled existing disinformation to bulk out his lame PhD thesis.

In this new Pandaemon-aeon, Nothing has Truth and Everything remains Possible. Intent and Imagination trump ‘facts’, expert opinion, and probability, and we make up ‘reality’ as we go along.

Lachman explores at length the careers and occult antecedents of notable demagogues such as Hitler and Mussolini, yet these deplorables took their cues from the Nietzschean and Crowleyesque occult philosophy of the Triumph of the Will, rather than from the Chaoist Triumph of the Imagination.

Lachman also digresses at length upon various ‘spiritual gurus’ who have mastered the skill of exploiting some peoples need to have meaning and authority imposed. In this he perhaps doesn’t go far enough, as anyone spouting ‘spiritual wisdom’ spews only lies and bullshit.

Chaos Magic never became an exploitative religious or political cult itself despite a couple of (failed) minority attempts to develop such things within or alongside it, precisely because it gave away the secrets of how to do this to all commers, thus proofing them against it.

Lachman notes that the occult seems mainly associated with right wing political initiatives although he mentions the so far ineffectual Witches against Trump campaign. The liberal centre and left seem to have missed a trick here in recent decades by presenting their ideas in purely rationalistic terms lacking in imaginative glamour and charisma. By allowing vociferous minorities to write the book on politically correct thought-speech, the liberal centre and left have handed the radical right the opportunity to present themselves as heroic free-thinking rebels.

That mystically inspired conservative initiatives can, with the passage of time, mutate into an equally oppressive materialistic liberal absolutism may come as a surprise to many, so it seems refreshing that Lachman details the Synarchy or ‘Total Rule’ philosophy lurking within the European Union project.

Overall, Lachman has written a fascinating analysis of how esoteric and occult ideas have had political consequences, without descending too far into the murky pits of conspiracy theory.

Addendum

Chaos Magic has enlarged humanity’s toolkit, what will we eventually do with it?

Destroy all monotheist religions and create more amusing personalised ones for ourselves?

Achieve Chaocracy – government by randomly selected committees of citizens?

Overcome the almost universal scientific belief in the expanding universe hypothesis?